Internet Evolution: Don’t Fight the New Wave of Digital Content

Does access to social networking, video sharing, and other new media online capabilities mean wasted time, lost productivity, and possibly security concerns or are there legitimate business reasons to include them on organization web sites? Many of us are encountering these and related issues in our own organizations. Stacey Peterson, the editor of Information Week Daily Newsletter, raises these questions in the following excerpt to the October 15, 2007 issue. Also included is a link to a related but more extensive article by Aditya Kishre;

———————————

“The U.S. Department of Defense earlier this year banned access to YouTube, MySpace, Photobucket, StupidVideos, MTV, and a bunch of other Web sites by soldiers stationed abroad. It makes sense. We’re at war, and soldiers shouldn’t be playing around on the Internet, sucking up bandwidth, and opening up the military network to security compromises.”

“But what about your employees? Does access to social networking, video-sharing, and other new media online capabilities mean wasted time and lost productivity or are there legitimate business reasons they might be on those sites? Site blocking is the Defense Department’s quick and easy answer to the proliferation of rich media applications. But it’s not the only solution and may not be the best one for companies trying to take advantage of all the creative energy surging around online communities and digital content sites. With the right infrastructure and controls, it’s possible to keep access open to the many new applications that already are making people more connected and productive.”

“This is the topic of the first story in our Internet Evolution series. Aditya Kishore, a senior analyst at InformationWeek’s sister organization Heavy Reading, examines the forces driving the new online ecosystem and ways that companies can capitalize on it. This series is being done in conjunction with internetevolution.com, our new Web site devoted to investigating the future of the Internet….”